get to the latest on the fiscal cliff. 18 days before everyone's taxes go up. Every federal program set to be cut. Jon karl covers that for us from capitol hill. And the president and house speaker boehner met again last night. It was less than an hour. And doesn't look like they're making much progress. Reporter: Not at all. No signs of progress at all up here, george. Both sides emerged from that meeting, calls it frank. You know in international politics when the sides describe a meeting as frank, it usually means they vehemently disagreed or they're on the verge of war. I talked to a prominent house democrat late last night who told me, simply, get your parachute ready. We're going over the cliff. Meanwhile, I can tell you, george, congress is pretty much, you know, a desert right now. Both congressional leaders on both sides of the capitol going home for the weekend. No signs of anything going on here. I would imagine that both sides must have fall-back plans in place if there's not going to be a deal. Reporter: Certainly, no prospects of a major deficit deal. One kind of a fallback plan, republicans are talking about, is they would agree to extend whatever tax cuts they can. That means the middle-class tax cuts the president wants to extend. But do nothing else. That means a big battle over the debt ceiling coming in the early part of the year.

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